From executable models to deployment: A methodology for early evaluation of orchestration-based reconfiguration

Microservice systems increasingly require sophisticated adaptation approaches to meet performance and scalability demands efficiently. However, a gap persists between the design of adaptation strategies and their reliable implementation in real-world platforms. This paper introduces an end-to-end methodology and toolchain that addresses this gap by enabling a seamless transition from high-level executable design in Behavioral Specification (ABS) to Kubernetes deployment. The methodology integrates monitoring, prediction, actuation, and orchestration synthesis into a closed-loop adaptive system. Our key contribution is Kubernetes SmartDeployer, a tool that automatically synthesises constraint-satisfying Kubernetes orchestrations from declarative specifications, using the same constraint solver as the ABS toolchain to preserve the intended archi- tectural constraints and deployment structure specified at design time. We validate the approach through two classes of orchestration-based reconfiguration approaches: edge–cloud microservice migration and proactive– reactive architectural scaling, applied to benchmark systems and an industrial case study. Experimental results demonstrate high positive behavioural correlation (Pearson 𝑟 ≥ 0.81, 𝑝 < 10^−3 ) demonstrate strong behavioural correlation between simulated and deployed systems across multiple metrics, showing that developers can explore and preliminarily assess adaptation strategies in simulation before deployment.